Among the rogue cultivators, hearts were wavering.
Whispers spread like dark currents in a gutter, through the Market Ward, through cave abodes, through every corner sunlight struggled to reach.
Resources-who did not crave them?
The Great Jin Immortal Dynasty had accumulated wealth over ten thousand years. Even a little slipping through its fingers would give rootless duckweed like them enough to gnaw on for a long time.
Though King Wu Gui's savage might was renowned and he ruled a domain of his own, exploiting the weak and indulging his confidants were commonplace.
The benefits those beneath him could actually share were severely limited.
Their fear was real, too.
Wu Gui commanded many demonic cultivators and heretical cultivators whose methods were vicious, readily extracting souls and refining spirits. Deserters often met miserable ends, implicating their relatives as well.
That Qing Chen painted such dazzling pictures with his words, but who knew whether he could be trusted?
If they believed him, only for Great Jin's troops to retreat in defeat, what chance of survival would there be for them, left behind as "accomplices to rebellion"?
It would be nothing but an illusory bubble.
More agonizing still were their fortunes and lives.
Their foundations, cave abodes, homes, spirit fields, spiritual energy, and more, painstakingly built up over decades or a century, were their very lifeblood.
Abandon them? Easier said than done!
And where could they flee? Vast though the world was, where could lowly cultivators find a place to settle and survive?
Watchfulness, hesitation, anticipation, fear... all manner of emotions intertwined.
Unlike the wavering rogue cultivators, some small lineages that had suffered heavily under Wu Gui's exploitation, or bore old grudges against his forces, were far more active in their thinking.
Within secret chambers, formations shimmered, sealing off the inside from the outside.